Abstract: Older adults tend to favor positive over negative information more than do younger adults. This positivity effect may be due to greater emotion regulation of negative emotions based on socioemotional selection theory. The previous research has shown a positivity effect in older adults when judging trustworthiness of faces. We examined whether facial expressions and face age affected the positivity effect in a facial trustworthiness judgment task. Younger and older adults had to rated trustworthiness of young and old faces with happy, neutral, and sad expressions. The results revealed a significant 3-way interaction of face age, facial expression, and participant age. That is, there was a positivity effect when rating young sad faces and old neutral faces. Greater regulation of negative emotions in older adults than in younger adults cannot fully account for the current findings, specially for the positivity effect in rating old neutral faces, but not in old happy and old sad faces. Older adults might be more sensitive to cues of trustworthiness of own-age neutral faces as compared with younger adults.

Key words: facial trustworthiness judgment, positivity effect, face age, facial expression